November 27, 2014

I've hardly updated at all this month, sigh. Ah well. I finished the day before Thanksgiving, so I'm pleased at that--also when my mom is around, I just don't get the free time to type much. I did hit 50k, but the actual plot ends just before the end of Part 1--go figure. I suppose this works out for the best because I had the first half roughly plotted out, but haven't had the second half plotted much at all. This makes me ponder the idea of writing Part 2 next year, but the one year I tried doing that was the year I lost NaNo.* On the other hand, if I actually plot shit over the next year, maybe that would help?

* To be fair, other circumstances also contributed to this in a worse way, like having no laptop and a long-distance boyfriend and trying to write NaNo while on a PDA, and having issues getting my typing off of the PDA. I also learned that if you write on anything but a laptop, the writing physically takes longer and yet you think you've written more than you have. Bad, unrecommended move. This year my friend Jess, who writes faster than anyone on the planet and can do 50k in a week or a few days blindfolded/with her hands tied behind her back (probably), tried to use handwriting and a typewriter for awhile, and then wondered why she had very little word count. (I did not comment on the social media also interfering, she figured that one out on her own.) After I said something to her about this, she stopped doing that and everything was as fast as usual again.

I actually like my plot idea and still more or less like it even after 50k, which is saying something for me and my fiction--I've universally preferred my nonfiction writings the last few years to my crap fiction. It's been pretty fun to write and I've managed to ass pull some things even when I only loosely plotted the first act. I also wrote a meet-cute-"anonymous" scene between two characters dressed up as Tetris pieces, so that's memorable. (Even stranger since this takes place sometime in the far future, but what the hell. I decided the planet' settlers brought Tetris along.)

On the other hand, I'm aware that 95% of what I write are conversations. I can't envision settings for shit (even when I set it in a scene akin to Hawaii, which I just went to a few months ago), much less describe them. The plot of my first act is a lot of Jane Austen social drama and conversation. I do have characters literally getting into fights twice, but again, I haven't the faintest idea how to describe those so they were as sketchy as possible. (The laziness of NaNo.) It's essentially a gender wars plot in which characters from a more feminist island nation are forced to form a marital alliance with the more sexist island next door. While most of my characters from that island are ah, much more liberal than they should be, there's still cultural issues going on, and the natives figuring out what the visitors are up to, and various couplings going on. Which also made me think that I can't write romances either--but that's no shocker when I don't remember what that was like IRL any more.

I dunno...I liked it in general (albeit I was finding myself resentful of not having as much knitting time--plus I had to finish a sweater for December 2), but I can't help but notice how inadequate I am for fixing the problems I see. I never have any idea how to just write it better. I can fix sentences and correct spelling fine, but how to just write a better plot, with "vivid description" and all that shit? No clue, ever.